oChina’s big electric vehicle push is about to
get even bigger: The country is planning to end the sale of fossil fuel-powered
vehicles entirely. China is world’s largest auto market with about 28 million
vehicles sold last year, and this push
will accelerate worldwide EV adoption. (Read
here).

oAutomotive OEMs are giving timelines and
financial commitments to their EV plans.
Mercedes-Benz to embrace electrification, announcing that it will be
electrifying its entire vehicle lineup by 2022. (Read here).
VW announces massive $84 billion investment in electric cars and batteries to bring 300 EV models to the market by 2030.
(Read here).
BMW readies mass production of electric cars,
12 models by 2025. (Read here).Ford’s
Lincoln will electrify all its models by 2022. (Read here).

oBMW goes a step further and announces how it
will finance its EV push. It aims to cut roughly $2.4 billion from its annual
purchasing bill by squeezing costs for transmission components and other parts
to help finance the shift to electric
vehicles. (Read here).

oEV is not limited to cars only. There are news stories about the electric truck and the electric tractor also. Daimler
delivers first electric trucks with UPS
as its first US commercial customer. (Read here). Escort
unveils plans for India’s first electric tractor. India is the largest market
for tractor by volume, and this can have a major impact on the adoption of electric tractors. (Read here)

oThere are other interesting
technology developments in automotive. Tesla extended the battery life of its
cars to help Florida residents flee Hurricane
Irma. This is an interesting use case of
over the air upgrade of the car. (Read here).
SEAT has struck a deal with Amazon to bring the firm’s personal assistant tech Alexa into its new models. Other VW models
will follow soon while some other OEMs are using Apple’s Siri or Microsoft
Cortana. Connected cars is another
battleground where Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple will fight for their customer
share. (Read here).
IBM is collaborating with ZF
Friedrichshafen and UBS to jointly
develop an open automotive transaction platform for mobility services based on the blockchain.
“Car eWallet,” which was originally announced by ZF in January, is a digital
assistant that makes it easy to pay for electric car charging while on the go.
(Read here).

oThere is activity in investments in automotive
innovation. Samsung announced two major pieces of news to take its automotive
strategy up a gear. It has launched the Samsung Automotive Innovation Fund, a
$300 million fund to back startups and other interesting
bets in the automotive market. And as a
first investment out of that fund, Samsung has put €75 million into TTTech, an
Austria-based developer of platforms and safety software for connected cars,
alongside a corresponding investment from
Audi. (Read here).

oEngineering service providers are also making
investments in automotive space. Wipro opens automotive center of excellence in Romania. (Read here).

·Aerospace

oIn Aerospace, new programs are almost complete, and focus is now on optimizing
production and supply chain to clear the backlog and optimize cost. Boeing will accelerate its 787 production to 14 aircraft per
month from the current production rate of 12 aircraft
per month. Boeing has 787 order backlog of about 700 airplanes. (Read here).

oATR challenges P&W’s dominance in turboprop
engine market. ATR and Bombardier
dominate the market of about 100 regional turboprop aircraft a year, and both exclusively use P&W engines.
This move can help GE Aviation. (Read here).
While ATR wants to end the monopoly of
P&W in turboprop engine, Embraer wants
to end the duopoly of ATR and Bombardier
in regional turboprop aircraft. Embraer is considering to build a new turboprop
aircraft. (Read here).

oGlobal civil aircraft fleet was about 19,000 at the beginning of 2016, and it will be double to 38000+ by 2034.
The majority of growth in aircraft will
come from Asia and Asian Airlines are
preparing themselves for financing these additional airplanes. AirAsia plans to
sell every non-core investment as it plans to add 30 new aircraft every year gearing to expand its fleet
to 500 aircraft by 2027. For engineering
service providers it will be an opportunity
to work on customization, interiors, training and AMS/ MRO services in Asia.(Read
here).

oCyient to acquire B&F Design for $5.5
million to augment its capabilities in build and maintain phase of aerospace engineering. (Read here).

oCyient is also divesting its 49% stake in Infotech
Aerospace Services, Inc. ("IASI") to Pratt & Whitney, a division
of United Technologies Corporation. In my view, this highlights challenges in
scaling up defense segment in engineering services. (Read here).

·IoT

oEver since Jeffery Immelt has stepped down, the success of GE’s digital and IoT strategy is in spotlight. Now according to a news story, GE is
bringing in financial discipline to its IoT business. It's scaling back its 2020 target and will focus its Predix
solution to three industries only – energy, aerospace and oil and gas. The jury
is out whether a horizontal strategy or a vertical strategy will be more
successful in IoT platforms. (Read here).

·Drones

oDrone Inspection as a Service is catching up as
evident from three news stories this week from Honeywell, GE, and MIT. Honeywell launches its UAV
industrial inspection service in
collaboration with Intel. (Read here).
GE’s Avitas Systems Teams With NVIDIA to Enhance AI for Drone Inspections.
(Read here).
This MIT drone can pinpoint a specific
package in a giant warehouse (Read here).

·3D printing.

oTwo stories are
highlighting how 3D printing is progressing and getting into the mainstream. One of the Chinese provinces is asking all 3D printing shops to
register with the police. This move will help in keeping a check on printing
of dangerous products (weapons) and patent and copyright infringement. (Read here).
The other story is approval of first 3D part for end use in oil and gas by Llyod’s
Register. Till now 3D printing was mainly for prototypes in oil and gas and this
is a good beginning of the integration of 3D printing into production (Read here).

·PLM

oPROLIM acquires Ally PLM and augments its
Siemens PLM capabilities. After the acquisition
of Geometric by HCL, there are very few
independent PLM service providers left with some scale. PROLIM or couple of
other PLM service providers can consolidate small PLM providers and bring scale in this fast-growing market. A couple of large
engineering service providers have a PLM hole in their portfolio and also few
other engineering service providers want to scale their PLM practice by
acquisitions. PLM consolidation will be an interesting trend to watch. (Read here).

·Telecom

oChinese telecom ambition roadblock. Donald Trump
administration blocks the sale of Lattice
semiconductor to Chinese-backed firm citing security concerns. US market is one
big hole in the portfolio of Chinese OEMs and it looks that this will remain so in
the new administration also. (Read here).